Security – speaking in terms of every context – is vitally indispensable, however, it becomes imperative even more than ever in the case when you’re replacing the world’s oldest, biggest and most resilient communications network available – the POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) or traditional landline phone system. Although, no individual security measure can safeguard and completely get rid of malicious attacks against VoIP and Axvoice, nevertheless a layered mechanism can significantly lessen the prospect of such attacks to happen as expected.
Whether big or small, all types and sizes of businesses are shifting to internet telephone service. Therefore, a growing number of enterprises are installing wireless Voip hotspots inside office buildings, shopping malls, corporate campuses and various other facilities, allowing employees to be able to use wireless IP handsets and other similar compatible devices to stay connected with each other, plus sustaining communications across the outside world, without depending on traditional desktop phones, however, the owners adopting the voip service need to seriously mull over the security implications. While a number of threats exist, three stand out as the most dangerous, particularly to smaller organizations: denial of service, spit and fraud.
Following are some lethal threats being faced by voip users all over the world:
Identity And Service Theft
This is a service theft that can be represented by phreaking – a type of hacking that steals service from a Voip service provider, or use service of another person at his expensive. Encryption is not rare in SIP. Since, Sip controls authentication over voip phone calls; therefore, user credentials are vulnerable to theft.
Voip Eavesdropping is the method used by most hackers to steal others credentials and vital information, such as names, password and phone numbers. This, in turn, enables them to gain complete authority over voicemail, calling plan(s), call forwarding, call blocking, and even billing information. This is just about stealing credentials for free voip calls, instead identity theft is done to get important information like business data.
Vishing
“Vishing” is another word for VoIP Phishing, in which a fake party calls you pretending to be a truthful organization let’s say a bank and request for your confidential and critical information.
Viruses and malware
VoIP devices including softphones and other softwares are susceptible to worms, viruses and malware, like any other Internet application. Since these softphone applications function in user systems such as PCs and PDAs, thus, they become open and vulnerable to harmful code attacks in voice applications.
DoS (Denial of Service)
A DoS attack effects a network or device, thus refusing the service to be used and hinders connectivity. This is carried out by overriding its bandwidth or overloading the network and the device’s internal resources by overflowing a target with unwanted SIP call-signaling messages. This results in calls to drop ahead of time and arrests call processing. Once the hacker makes a DoS attack, they gain a complete authority over the Voip service system.
SPIT (Spamming over Internet Telephony)
The word ‘Spamming’ won’t be a new term to you, incase you are an email address holder. Spamming means sending unwanted emails to people, without their consent. Normally, these emails are an online sales marketing strategy. Though spamming in VoIP has not been noticed generally as yet, but has seen to be on the spread. Each VoIP account has a separate associated IP address. Using this, spammers send their messages (voicemails) over to thousands of IP addresses, thus, piling your inbox with unwanted spam voicemails and taking up your space. This is just not it. Spam messages may also carry viruses and spyware which can cause malicious effects to your Voip device.
Call Tampering
‘Call tampering’ is another dangerous attack on Voip which involves messing with an in progress phone call, or in other words, tempering it. For instance, the attacker can fiddle with the call quality by interrupting it with noise or delaying the voice delivery to the other user.
By now you might be well-aware of the possible lethal attacks witnessed in Voip. There is no definite way to stop the attackers, but there is a way to prevent these attacks from occurring in the first place.
Well! after all this horrifying discussion the good news is voip technology has undergone a lot of research and improvements. Scientists have successfully overcome all these problems. Companies like Axvoice etc. are providing trouble free services for years and the threats mentioned above are now limited to academic discussions only.
